Roq Supports Major UK Financial Institution Through RTGS Renewal Programme

The Client

This engagement was with a major UK-based monetary financial institution who were in the process of delivering improvements to the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system as an ‘RTGS renewal’ programme of work. This work included the adherence to the new ISO 20022 financial messaging standard.

The Challenge

The client engaged with Roq to provide a ‘Head of Testing’ for their RTGS renewal programme which aimed to bring them in line with ISO 20022 and enable a range of benefits fit for the future of the UK’s High Value Payment System (HVPS). The client’s core challenge was a need to bring onboard effective strategic leadership across the testing discipline of the programme in order to meet aggressive legislative deadlines.

RTGS systems facilitate the instantaneous, irrevocable transfer of funds between banks, without lag and are the backbone of high-value, time-critical payments. ISO 20022 is a comprehensive new financial messaging standard which offers a rich, structured, and interpretable language for electronic data interchange between global financial institutions. Together, they have been described as the future of financial messaging, one that is more fluid and secure than ever before.

A survey by Celent suggested that globally only 72% of banks will be ready to meet the ISO 20022 November 2025 deadline. The client engaged with Roq to apply their expertise and support this large banking and finance organisation’s complex technology programme.

The Solution

Roq’s role in this engagement was to provide ownership and accountability for the delivery of all areas of functional and non-functional testing across the programme. This was in addition to providing services that enabled the realisation of the programme’s testing schedule, including defect, data, environments, and the transition to live processes and procedures.

Roq’s ownership and accountability extended to the engagement of internal user groups and over 200 external participants to facilitate acceptance events, as well as the quality assurance of testing evidence provided by third parties for solutions delivered into the overall architecture.

Roq carried out an initial review to better understand the client’s test maturity. This process involved reviewing all relevant areas of the business so that an appraisal of organisational test practices could be carried out, including standards, processes, tooling, and documentation.

Roq’s Quality Engineering expertise quickly highlighted areas for optimisation in tooling and test processes, and made recommendations and adjustments as required. Within this, Roq helped implement a standardised tooling approach for the client and guaranteed that all processes aligned with Quality Engineering best practice to ensure the client was best prepared as the project progressed.

Roq regularly met with senior stakeholders from technology and other areas of the business throughout the engagement to safeguard the smooth, timely delivery of the second major milestone in the client’s RTGS renewal programme, and manage the client’s expectations throughout. Roq also provided further direction and guidance to support the onward journey towards the next major milestone due in 2024.

The Outcome

Some of the benefits relating to this engagement were as follows:

• Roq’s initial testing review provided senior stakeholders with increased confidence in a business-critical programme of work

• Improved and standardised the bank’s approach to tooling, enabling results capture and progress monitoring to save the client hundreds of hours in the future

• Smooth and timely delivery of major programme milestone, allowing the client to continue delivering essential services and stay in line with industry regulations

• Roq left the client in a better place with improved processes and procedures that would aid the progression towards future milestones in their RTGS renewal programme.